Zodiac review

 Number 640 on the top 1000 films of all time is David Fincher's mystery thriller Zodiac.

Telling the true story of the investigation into the infamous Zodiac killer, 'Zodiac' stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr and Mark Ruffalo. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as San Fransisco Chronicle cartoonist Robert Graysmith and Downey Jr plays crime reporter Paul Avery. Both journalists become so obsessed with investigating the Zodiac killer that their lives quickly fall apart. Rounding out the trio is police inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo.)

There's no denying the Zodiac killer has its place in the cultural zeitgeist. This film was released in 2007, a good thirty-three years after he supposedly stopped killing. Buzzfeed's video concerning Zodiac has over 15 million views. A few years ago there was even a running joke that Ted Cruz was the Zodiac killer. The Zodiac Killer is a cultural phenomenon and David Fincher capitalised on this brilliantly. Drawing inspiration from Robert Graysmith's true-crime books 'Zodiac' and 'Zodiac unmasked.' Fincher is a great thriller director, but he has a tendency to be gratuitous in his depiction of violence. Se7en is a top example of this. However, he shot Zodiac with a nice level of restraint. I thought we would be seeing Zodiac brutally torturing and killing his victims, but Fincher was far more subtle than this. 

Although what he had in subtlety, he lacked in pacing. I would argue that the film was unevenly paced. It is set between 1969 and 1991. And things move along very quickly. Too quickly, I think. Fincher would show one scene in a particular year and then move on before you have time to get your breath. You would see a scene from 1970 and then the next scene is in 1971. You don't have time to adjust to one scene before it has moved onto the next. This fast-paced nature did make things hard to follow at times. 

However, Fincher did well to always keep the suspense up. I'm not an expert on the Zodiac killer, but I know that he was never identified or caught. I was wondering how this might affect the ending. Would Fincher stay true to life or take creative license? He stayed true to life and left the identity of the Zodiac as ambiguous - although heavily implied to be the suspicious Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch,) but this could never be proved. I think if Fincher had offered a definitive solution would have been disrespectful to the real victims of the Zodiac killer. 

If anything, this film was about obsession. Both Graysmith and Avery become obsessed over finding the true identity of the killer and it costs them everything. Graysmith loses his family and Avery turns to drugs and alcohol before eventually losing his job. Gyllenhaal and Downey Jr were great in their parts. Downey Jr played Avery with the usual aloofness that he affects to all his roles, but Gyllenhaal was more understated as the quieter, socially awkward Graysmith. Although that isn't really unlike much of his other roles. But I particularly liked John Carroll Lynch who was heavily suspected of being the Zodiac killer. He played the role with an arrogance and a menace like he knew that he was untouchable. And he was. He died before he could be officially charged.

True, Fincher's pacing is uneven in places, but Zodiac is still a great thriller with genuine scares that don't lean into gory, as well as a tense plot that will keep you guessing. Will we ever find out the true identity of the Zodiac killer? I wouldn't hold my breath.

Training Day review

 Number 613 on the top 1000 films of all time is 2001 crime thriller Training Day.

Set over twenty-four hours in a rough LA neighbourhood, Training Day explores the relationship between two police officers: the maverick, borderline corrupt, Narcotics detective Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington) and his new rookie partner Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke.)

Training Day pits two moralities against each other: Harris' the ends always justifies the means and Hoyt's justice over vengeance. Whereas the naive and innocent Hoyt wants to play by the rulebook, Harris rips it up and throws it out the window. He is adamant that his own brand of justice is what produces results from faking search warrants to unlawfully shooting suspects and covering up their murders. Hoyt has to battle hard to tow the line. The last thing he wants is to be sucked into Harris' corrupt ways.  But which form of justice is best?

Training Day makes a compelling argument for both. There is a time for following the rules and a time for breaking them. Breaking the rules, all the time, like Harris does, makes them redundant. But you can't be rigid, like Hoyt, and follow them to the letter. Which morality is better? That's for the audience to decide.

Denzel Washington won the Best Actor Oscar and while he brought a realism to the character, I don't think his performance was oscar-worthy. We've seen the corrupt cop who breaks the rules to get the job done time and time again. While Washington brought a charisma to the role, he was over-the-top. His adlibbed line "King Kong aint got shit on me" just sounded stupid.

Ethan Hawke was more convincing as the still wet-behind-the-ears Hoyt. It is his actions that drive the plot forward. Despite Harris' warnings, he stops two junkies trying to rape a teenage girl - an intervention that later saves his life when Hoyt is about to be killed by Mexican gangbangers. And it is Hoyt's refusal to go along with Harris' cover-up of a murder that brings them to odds. Perhaps you could argue Hoyt symbolises every wide-eyed, newbie cop determined to save the world while Harris is the cynical, jaded, washed-up copper beaten down by the world he has been trying to save. And rather than playing the victim, Harris spins the opportunity to his advantage.

Training Day had a nice authentic current running through it. Director Antoine Fuqua gained permission to film in neighbourhoods belonging to the 'Bloods' gang in exchange for Blood gangbangers appearing in the film. However, the ending seemed odd. Harris and Hoyt get into one final confrontation in a barrio where Harris holds control over the residents. The whole neighbourhood comes to watch. While they were initially Harris' acolytes they betray and even threaten to shoot him. I guess they were sick of his bossing them around and I suppose they had lost respect for him, but this is pure supposition in lieu of any real explanation. And it was all pointless anyway as they don't kill Harris. Instead he is later shot by the Russian mob who he has had an off-screen run-in.

Training Day was a good film if a tad overrated. Hawke was great, but the ending was strange. And Washington was more cartoon than actual character.

Little Miss Sunshine review

 Number 414 on the top 1000 films of all time is the tragicomedy road film 'Little Miss Sunshine.'

Olive (Abigail Breslin) is the youngest of the Hoover family - possibly the most dysfunctional family in the US. Her father Richard (Greg Kinnear) is failing motivational speaker, her older brother Dwayne (Paul Dano) is an angsty teenager who has taken a vow of silence. Her uncle Dr Frank Ginsburg (Steve Carell) has recently been released from a mental hospital after trying to commit suicide and Olive's grandfather Edwin (Alan Arkin) snorts heroin and swears every other minute. Rounding them out is Olive's mother Sheryl (Toni Collette) who is on the verge of a breakdown trying to get her crazy family from New Mexico to California so Olive can participate in a child beauty pageant.

Little Miss Sunshine is a brilliant feel-good film. It is hilarious, but heart-breaking. Tragic and touching. It engages with many difficult themes in a sensitive way. Least of all is the idea of body image and self-confidence. Olive is not your typical child beauty queen if there is such a thing. She is worried that she isn't pretty or skinny enough, but her grandfather is the first person to convince her otherwise. Olive and Edwin's relationship is at the heart of the film. Breslin and Arkin had a great chemistry and played well off each other. Arkin won Best Supporting Actor and deservingly so. True, you could argue that he is your stereotypical, grumpy un-PC baby boomer grandpa, but he played the part damn well. And it is his grumpy un-PC ways that provide a lot of the film's humour.

The rest of the supporting cast is just as good. As a comedy actor, I sometimes find that Carell can be quite over-the-top, but he played the role with a lot of restraint, while still being funny. Paul Dano is often cast as a moody outsider sic Prisoners or There Will be Blood. But he gave Dwayne some vulnerability and stopped him from being just another stroppy teenager. Perhaps you could argue the script short-changed Toni Collette as her character doesn't have the same eccentricities as the others, but she still acted as the glue that held the family together.

And I loved how directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris lampooned the grossly exploitative nature of child beauty pageants. This was intentional as writer Michael Ardnt wanted to portray the horribly competitive nature of these contests. They divide little girls into winners and losers often shattering their self-esteem in the process. Except for Abigail Breslin, all of the other contestants were real-life child beauty pageant winners. Or should I say little girls being exploited so their power-hungry parents can gain status.  

But when Olive performs an intentionally risque dance she is almost shut down, but her whole family quickly joins in. The whole notion of beauty pageants boils down to sexualising and disempowering little girls, but when Olive reclaims her power, she is punished. I loved how this hypocrisy was tackled head-on.

I did enjoy this film. There were great gags, but it also had a lot of heart. And Breslin and Arkin were fantastic together.

La Vie En Rose review

 Number 603 on the top 1000 films of all time is the musical biopic La Vie En Rose.

This French film tells the story of famed singer Edith Piaf, otherwise known as the Little Sparrow. Marion Cotillard stars as Piaf. From her impoverished childhood to her untimely death, we see the rise and fall of France's national chanteuse. 

I didn't like this film. It wasn't just that the subject matter didn't interest me - I am neither French nor a baby boomer so Edith Piaf has never been something that's high on my music list. Call me a culturally ignorant millennial, but c'est comme ca. I didn't like the way the story was told. It seemed random, chaotic and very incohesive. Like many other films it is told in a non-linear fashion and regularly plays around in time. 

It opens up on Edith as an adult and then cuts to her childhood and then to her as an adolescent, but whereas with other films there is a logic to this time-jumping, I failed to see any logic here. It was like the film-makers had realised at the last minute they had forgotten something important and stuffed it in anywhere they could. For example, near the end of the film we find out she has a child who died from Meningitis. We find this out in a flashback, but why was something of this magnitude not revealed until so late in the film? Not to mention all the numerous flash-forwards where we see Edith's ailing health.

And I certainly don't mean to diminish Marion Cotillard's performance. She won the Best Actress Oscar for this role - just one of six actors to win the award for a non-English speaking role - and she was good as Piaf. We bore witness to the many trials and tribulations of Piaf's life and Cotillard took us through her emotions well. And I think she embodied the character well. Reportedly she shrunk her already petite 5"6 frame to reach Piaf's diminutive 4"11 role. And I do remember reading somewhere that she worked with a dialect coach to capture Piaf's speaking voice as best as she could, although all the singing was dubbed by French singer Jil Aigrot.

Maybe this film would have been better suited to a lover of classic French music and not a philistine like me, but c'est la vie. Non, je ne regrette rien. 

Detachment review

 Number 570 on the top 1000 films of all time is the 2011 drama 'Detachment.'

Henry Barthes (Adrien Brody) is an emotionally closed-off substitute teacher who drifts from job to job. But in his latest assignment to a failing inner-city school, he forges strong connections with three young women - fellow teacher Sarah (Christina Hendricks,) a sex worker Erica (Sami Gayle) and troubled student Meredith (Betty Kaye.) These personal relationships soon have him questioning his professional detachment. 

There is no denying that there is an teaching crisis in the US. There is a shortage of 300,000 teachers with more an d more teachers leaving due to burn-out, massive class sizes and woefully inadequate funding. Covid brought a whole new set of challenges. And a lot of teachers feel unsupported by their superiors. Hell, some teachers are resorting to crowd-funding or paying for supplies out of their own pocket. It's just ridiculous.

I'm UK-based, but things are little better here. I have an SEN-teacher friend whose students come from broken families. Their parents are drunks and junkies who couldn't care less about their kids. I knew another teacher who taught over the pandemic and had virtual parents' evenings where the parents would turn up drunk or high. At school, I can attest we were little shits to our teachers with them storming out or having breakdowns on the regular. As an adult, I respect teachers so much. I could not do that job.

Detachment takes all of these issues and treats them with great sensitivity. We see everything through the eyes of substitute teacher Henry Barthes - he is a wounded man who is carrying around the trauma of seeing his mother's suicide as a child. He is also a lonely man with no family. Despite this, he refuses to give up on any of his students and encourages them all to achieve their potential. True none of them perform a full 180, but you can definitely a see a chance from the start to the end of the film.

A lot of that is down to Henry Barthes. You repeatedly tell a student he's always going to be a failure, he may start to believe you. But if you believe in them, they may believe in themselves. That's what the best teachers do. I very much enjoyed Brody as Barthes and Hendricks as Sarah. There is one particularly touching scene where she helps one struggling student with his maths work. He brought an authenticity to the character. Perhaps some of that is down to Carl Lund's script. He was a teacher so he was able to bring a lot of realism to the writing especially in how the teachers interacted and related to each other.

Many of the issues presented here seemed painfully realistic. From the unruly children to the parents blaming teachers for their children's failures - Sarah has one mother scream in her face after her daughter is expelled - to the government officials blaming the teachers for their under-achieving students. Isiah Witlock Jr had a small, but great role as government official Mr Mathis. He is there to help the school achieve its potential, but insults the teachers by implying their failings is making the whole area look bad. Very quickly the veneer slips and he quietly threatens the school principal. He reminded me of every pompous, holier-than-thou nit-picking jobsworth who only cares about money or reputation. He was thoroughly unlikeable, smarmy and malicious character.

Lucy Liu also had a small role, but she was also great as guidance counsellor Dr Parker who has a mental breakdown after trying her best to help her students, only to have them throw it back in her face.

My sister has been a teacher most of her life and she has said that teachers are expected to do so much more than the 9-5. They're expected to work in their free time and on weekends. But more than that, they're expected to be mentors and surrogate parents. That is very much what Henry Barthes is with the sex worker Erica and the troubled student Meredith. It is heavily implied that Erica is under-age and Henry takes her in and becomes a surrogate father to her. The two of them open up to each other, and with Henry's guidance, Erica starts to take more personal responsibility. Sami Gayle brought a lot of vulnerability to the role and this makes her ultimate fate all the more tragic. Feeling he is becoming too close, he calls social services to take Erica away.

But the true tragedy lies with Meredith whom Henry also becomes a surrogate father for. She is badly bullied by her classmates and has an abusive relationship with her father. Her only creative outlet is her photography which she uses to express her emotions. Henry and Meredith begin connecting more deeply until he realises that he may be crossing his own personal boundaries and he pushes her away. This ends horrifically with Meredith committing suicide. But this storyline highlights a conflict that most teachers go through. How do you stay professionally detached from somebody who is in your care? Especially somebody as young and as troubled as Meredith.

However, with so much going on in one film, it was unfortunate that some story-lines were short-changed. Henry and Sarah have a small romantic relationship, but this wasn't explored in enough detail to have truly been effective. I think this was a shame as Sarah's influence would have helped Henry reconnect with his emotions. Yet we didn't focus on this enough for it to have any major impact on his character. The film is just over an hour-and-a-half long, but I think an extra twenty or thirty minutes would have helped to round out this subplot.

But nevertheless, this was a great film that would have otherwise flown under my radar. And every respect to teachers. I tip my hat to you.

Whale Rider review

 Number 606 on the top 1000 films of all time is the New Zealand drama 'Whale Rider'.

Set in modern-day New Zealand, Whale Rider is about Kahu 'Paikea' Apirana (Keisha Castle-Hughes,) a twelve-year old Maori girl who dreams of becoming the chieftain of her tribe, despite the fierce opposition of her grandfather Koro (Rawiri Paratene) who is adamant that the chieftain should always be male. Paikea works hard to overcome these patriarchal traditions.

It was a joy watching this film. I was fortunate enough to visit New Zealand in early 2020 and even more fortunate to attend the Tamaki Maori village. This was a fantastic experience which taught me a lot about the Maori culture and Maori traditions. And it was lovely revisiting some of these memories within 'Whale Rider.' And it was also great seeing the beautiful New Zealand landscape again.

One of the things I've loved about this challenge is that I get to watch films that I would otherwise have never heard of. And Whale Rider was a film that was definitely not on my radar, but I did enjoy it. It's strange, because the film seemed to give off a very low-budget feel, despite having a budget of almost 10 million New Zealand dollars. There wasn't any explosions, CGI or special effects and the film quality never seemed that high, but maybe that's because this was filmed in 2002. Despite that, I did enjoy watching it. Keisha, in her feature film and acting debut, gave a great performance as Paikea. She was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar and deservingly so.

I feel like it's all too common for a lot of children to feel like the black sheep of their families. They feel like they don't live up to expectations or have unsupportive, strict parents. A lot of well-meaning, but misguided parents can fail to properly support their children to realise their goals. Or as in Koro's case, they do everything in their power to stop them. This could have made Paikea a bitter and resentful character, but, instead, she was empowering and inspirational. She was determined to overcome the obstacles placed before her and that determination made her very endearing to watch. After her conflict with her grandfather comes to a head, Paikea gives an emotional speech in front of her family and friends that is dedicated to Koro and the traditions of her tribe. Keisha delivered it well. And it was difficult not to feel for her.

I also enjoyed Rawiri Paratene as Koro. He provided a lot of depth to what could have been a cardboard cut-out character. Instead of being only a grumpy grandfather, Koro is just an old man desperately clinging to his traditions in an ever-changing world. It was a sensitive portrayal of how sometimes we have to abandon tradition in the favour of progress.

The only thing that I took issue with was the ending. MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT. Koro throws his rei puta (whale tooth) into the ocean and  sets a challenge for his male proteges to recover it. The winner will become the new chieftain of the tribe. After they all fail, he despairingly summons the ancient ones - a group of whales as tradition stated that the first leader of their tribe rode to land on a whale - for guidance. Paikea also summons the whales in an attempt to help. The next evening, a pod of whales beach themselves. Despite the efforts of the whole tribe, they fail to get them back into the sea.

Just when it looks like all hope is lost, Paikea mounts one of the whales and coaxes him back into the water. The rest of the whales follow suit, but instead of returning to land, Paikea rides the whale back into the open water, seemingly ready to drown. I thought this went against the key message of 'Whale Rider.' This whole film is about her becoming the first female chieftain of her tribe. She is determined to smash open the traditional patriarchy. Why would she be so ready to die like this? If she does die then all of her efforts would have been for nothing. The audience has been invested in her journey and what have they received for it? A dead heroine? Unless she was hoping to be a martyr who would go onto inspire other women, but I didn't buy that.

Of course, this drowning was just a fake out. Paikea survives and is nursed back to health. Realising the error of his ways, Koro declares her the new chieftain. So Paikea achieved her goal, but I think this was a really extreme way of doing so.

The ending was a shame, as it did spoil an otherwise really good film. But that shouldn't stop you from watching Whale Rider. I would argue that it is an underrated movie that deserves all the recognition it can get.

The Butterfly Effect review

 Number 578 on the top 1000 films of all time is the science-fiction thriller 'The Butterfly Effect.'

Evan Treborn (Ashton Kutcher) is a young man who used to have unexplained blackouts as a child. Once grown up, he's realised that he can time travel whenever he reads certain entries of his journal. He begins going back in time to right his wrongs and change not just life, but girlfriend Kayleigh's (Amy Smart,) her psychotic brother Tommy (William Lee Scott) and their friend Lenny (Elden Henson.)

Science-fiction films always have the tendency of prioritising the big philosophical themes over the characters sic 2001: a Space Odyssey. However, I would argue that the opposite happened here. The premise is interesting enough - a real life embodiment of the Butterfly Effect - the smallest of actions can have the biggest of consequences. Or as the opening line reads: "it has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly's wings can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world."

But this original concept was let down by its execution. It felt very much like a teen movie with a loose science-fiction premise. It didn't help you had Ashton Kutcher as the lead. He wasn't particularly bad as a dramatic actor, but he is much better known for his role as dumb teenage pretty boy Michael Kelso in the 70's show. He certainly wasn't able to shake off his teen heart-throb image here. It also didn't help that much of the film took place on a university campus. The film came out in 2005 and it sounds and looks like it did. The characters are so dated in the way they talk and dress. For a film about time travel, somewhat ironically, this film is anything but timeless.

Much of the film also took place in flashbacks showing our principle cast as children and alter teenagers. And the child actors were just not good especially Logan Lerman and John Patrick Amedori as Evan at ages seven and thirteen respectively. When the adult Evan goes back in time, he embodies his younger selves, but with his present mind. And so when they're speaking, it is actually the adult Evan speaking and the dialogue sounded awful coming out of the younger actor's mouths. Their delivery was just awkward and unnatural.

This is a shame as this did have the potential to be an interesting film. It was an entertaining enough thriller, but it very much failed as potent science-fiction.